Building In-Bound Links The Easy Way.

If you’re trying to build an online business, you’re probably sick to the back teeth of other people’s advice.

It’s probably given in good faith and with the best of intentions, but it irks none the less. We all know that the way to make your business more visible is to get it to rank higher on the search engines. You don’t need to be a genius to work that one out yourself: we’re all aware of the value of off-page optimisation, thank you. Neither do you need to be the sharpest tool in the box to know that the more quality sites you have linking back to your site, the more authority and gravitas your own site will have. It’s simply an extension of the phrase making friends and influencing people. What these well-meaning people often fail to tell you, however, is to how to make these friends. Now, of course, they may not know that information themselves, or they may simply choose not to pass it on to you: that’s their prerogative. Well, we believe in sharing and value the generosity of spirit. So here are 6 simple tips to help to improve the number of in-bound links to your website. The real beauty here, of course, is that none of these cost.

Now, that’s a result, isn’t it?

Content.

Users visit online sites to gather information. It’s your job as the site owner to provide this. But, there’s much more to it than that. Anyone can produce a list of interesting facts – well, almost everyone, but they can’t force other people to read the list. That’s the challenge. The stuff you put on the website has to be informative, worthy of note and it also has to entertain. Now you may wonder why, but it’s actually quite simple really. If the content you post is bland or downright boring, then users will drift away and try somewhere else. If you can enlighten, inform and entertain at the same time, the chances are they’ll want to revisit you, and will therefore link back to your site.

Be Social.

There are countless social media platforms out there vying for attention. Now the temptation is to try to be all things to all people and register on all of them. That’s a mistake for two reasons. Firstly it’s a waste of your time, and secondly you run the risk of spreading yourself too thinly. It’s much better to concentrate your efforts on a couple of platforms and join in wholeheartedly. Engage and interact with the community and share your articles and useful insights with others. If what you post is worthy, you’ll get the credit you deserve. The only proviso is, don’t get carried away: there’s nothing worse than a serial poster for turning a community off. Less is more, after all.

Contribute to high quality sites.

Why should you do this? Well, because it pays dividends. Writing articles for niche sites within your market will get you noticed by the community and earn a big pat on the back from the site you contribute to. They’ll link back to you, and others will be persuaded by their recommendation.

Guest blogging.

Writing guest articles for other blogs is a certain way to build useful and quality backlinks, as long as you’re careful which blogs you contribute to. If you’re capable of writing good-quality, readable stuff, then it shouldn’t be a problem. Yes, it might be time-consuming, but the payback is worthwhile. It will bring some good exposure for you and benefit the website you write for: therefore everyone wins in the end. You get your in-bound link, they get a quality article.

Local listings.

This is often overlooked, but if you deal with a predominantly local clientele, then it makes sense to get a local listing to target the audience you’re aiming for. Sign up to Google Places. If you do this properly, you’ll ultimately get a backlink to your website.

Share video content of you have any.

Submitting video content to top sites like YouTube can certainly pay dividends and deliver numerous in-bound links. However, you’ll have to be certain that you’re doing this correctly. When you submit the video make sure that you optimise the title, description and Meta tags. You’ll also need to write a description that creates a link pointing to your site which then promotes your videos. This is a great technique and can lead to phenomenal results, assuming the video’s worth watching of course.

That’s obviously not an exhaustive list of ways to create in-bound links. There are many others, some of which have been covered in prior articles. What these techniques do achieve, however, are results in an amazingly short time. The point of backlinks is that they are meant to be organic and naturally sourced. That implies growth over a sustained period, rather than a burst of activity, followed by a fallow period of inactivity. It’s far better to do these things slowly and meticulously. If you charge at this headlong, like bull at a gate, it may backfire: you may end up getting in-bound links from websites with a dubious record or reputation, and that certainly won’t be of benefit.